My son and his wife asked me to watch their two-month-old baby while they went shopping. But no matter how much I held him and tried to soothe him, he wouldn’t stop crying inconsolably. I immediately sensed something was wrong. When I lifted his clothes to check his diaper… I froze. There was something… unimaginable. My hands were shaking. I grabbed him and rushed to the hospital.

I collapsed into a chair. My son, Daniel, was a high school teacher. Megan was a pediatric nurse, for heaven’s sake. They adored this child. They had waited four years to conceive him.

But as the doctor walked out to make the call that would tear my son’s life apart, a memory flickered in the back of my mind—a shadow of something I had seen when I arrived at their house that morning. A person I hadn’t thought twice about until this very moment.

Before I could process the thought, my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was Daniel. His voice was frantic, but it wasn’t the voice of a worried father; it sounded like the voice of a man who was hiding a secret.
Chapter 3: The Phone Call from the Dark

“Mom? Where are you? We’re home and the house is empty. Megan is hysterical!” Daniel’s voice crackled through the receiver.